Blueprints of the Afterlife

with no QA process to grab the bugs. He detected a little panicked fluttering at the edges of her mouth, a momentary wobble toward tears. He cupped his hand over her non-fork-wielding hand. Would Sylvie’s personality successfully map onto Abby’s, or would little Abby remnants crop up from time to time, like continuity errors in a movie? Watching her disappear into Sylvie was a bit like watching someone die, he was hesitant to admit, and for a moment a miniaturized sadness presented itself in his thoughts. Then he remembered that the whole point of this experiment was to turn his girlfriend into someone more interesting. He wondered if she’d take on Sylvie’s sexual proclivities, if it would feel like sleeping with a new woman.

Rocco summoned the waiter and ordered the olive and cheese plate out of sequence with the salads and entrees, then rubbed the veiny bulges on top of Sylvie’s hand. “So tell me more about this guy’s novel?”

Sylvie sighed. “It’s about the beginning of a new world. There’s a rampaging glacier in it. Clones. Giant heads that appear in the sky.”

“One of those.”

A significant aspect of replacing one personality with another involved what came to be called, in academic circles, third personing. Most of the time this involved the use of a prop, specifically a doll or figurine, life-size or not, into which the subject discarded his or her former personality. For Abby’s third personing, Rocco’d purchased a custom sex doll manufactured to his specifications—a precise, to-scale model of Abby, with the same color eyes, hair, measurements, etc., crafted of a rubberized polymer and dressed in one of Abby’s white-blouse-and-black-pants combos. She sat positioned on the couch of Sylvie’s apartment, a fashion magazine open in her lap. Returning that night from the wine bar, Rocco snapped on the lights and addressed the mannequin from across the room.

“Hello, Abby,” he said.

Sylvie stood in the doorway feeling like maybe she’d entered the wrong apartment.

“It’s okay,” Rocco said. “She’s just going to hang out here. Say hello.”

“Hi there,” Sylvie said.

“Now be polite, Sylvie, and address Abby by her name.”

“Hi, Abby.”

“Abby here is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in digital data archaeology. She says you have a nice apartment,” Rocco said.

“Thanks. Sorry for it being so small,” Sylvie said.

“Abby says, ‘Oh, no, don’t apologize. I’ve seen way smaller apartments in New York City. And what a neighborhood. Right in the middle of the hippest part of Manhattan.’”

Sylvie said, “Oh, stop. Can I get you a drink, Abby?”

Rocco said, “Abby says that would be nice. ‘Do you have tonic water?’”

“I think I have that. Rocco?”

“Sure, tonic water sounds good to me, too.”

Sylvie retrieved the drinks from the kitchen and returned to find Rocco chuckling at a witty comment Abby must have just made. “Say, Sylvie, Abby says she just finished one of the books you edited, The Subject’s Object.”

“That was a bitch to edit,” Sylvie said, coastering beverages. “All those passages in Russian and Icelandic.”

“Abby says she loved the ending.”

“I’m proud of that ending,” Sylvie said. “It took a while to get there. At one point I was reduced to tears. And not the good kind of tears.”

“I couldn’t get into The Subject’s Object,” Rocco said, “but I’m not all that literary.”

“Rocco’s the left-brainer of the relationship,” Sylvie said.

“Shit!” Rocco exclaimed, looking at his watch.

“What is it, honey?”

“There’s an email I forgot to send from work. And I left my laptop on my desk. Damn. I’m going to have to hop over there and hit SEND. I won’t be long, promise.” He gathered his jacket and kissed Sylvie on the forehead. “Sorry, Abby, I was just starting to enjoy our conversation. You two carry on without me.”

With Rocco gone, there came an awkward silence. Sylvie swirled the cubes in her glass. “So what line of work are you in, Abby?”

“Good question,” Abby said. “I just graduated, so I’m looking for jobs. Digital recovery stuff. I specialize in DVDs. What I’d love to do is work for a museum, restoring old movies. By old I mean 1900s or earlier.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a job in Manhattan. I’m guessing you’ve already sent your CV out to the museums?”

“Not so much yet. I landed a gig for a while working for Kylee Asparagus.”

“No kidding?” Sylvie said. “I loved her Asia album. She’s way underrated.” She rose and tickled a docked iPod. The opening of Asia played through bookshelf speakers.

As promised, Rocco wasn’t long, or was as long as it took him to walk around the block four times. When he returned, Sylvie sat in bed with a damp washcloth over her eyes. Abby remained on the couch, the magazine still in her lap.

“I suddenly got a really brutal headache,” Sylvie said.

“Did you download anything for it?”

“Did I what?”

“Take anything. Acetaminophen.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t entertain our guest.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“I could barely get a word in edgewise.”

Rocco poked at his pocket transmitter and entered a mild pain relief code, then an equally mild tranquilizer that had Sylvie snoring in a minute. Returning to the living room he paused in front of the fake Abby.

“Can I get you anything to eat?” he said.

Sylvie arrived home early on a Friday and found Rocco in bed with Abby. Apparently he hadn’t heard her come in. She watched him huffing over the prone form through the doorway. Abby’s legs were up, one of them bent over his right shoulder as he pumped and strained. Watching someone else have an orgasm is like witnessing a machine seize up, a system grind to a halt. Rocco grunted “Fuck” as he rolled onto his back, his cock audibly popping out of the artificial vagina like a cork exiting a bottle. He noticed Sylvie standing in the doorway.

“This is nothing,” Rocco said.

Sylvie frowned and went to the kitchen. A minute later she leaned against the dishwasher and Rocco leaned against the sink.

“I’m telling you, it was nothing. You didn’t see that.”

“I don’t want her staying here anymore,” Sylvie said.

“How do you think she feels about all this?”

“I don’t care how she feels, Rocco.”

“You’re not really mad at me.”

Sylvie palmed a tomato. “I am too.”

“You’re not. And you’re confused as to why you’re not. You feel like you should be more mad.”

Sylvie caught his eyes for a second, nonverbally offered up her confusion, then cast her gaze aside.

“She’s not real, Sylvie.”

“She loved you.”

“Huh?”

“Abby loved you, Rocco. She trusted you. She told me what you did.”

“There’s no Abby anymore. Just Sylvie.”

“I am Sylvie Yarrow.”